Lecture 24: Conjectural Emendation

Lecture 24 

 The ongoing series of lectures "Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism" continues with Lecture 24, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYcBlwAqzc , about conjectural emendations.  I had a stroke on June 14, and you may notice in this video that I am speaking more slowly than before.  Also for some reason I repeatedly didn't say "chi" correctly.  Oh well; hopefully improvement will continue.  I covered some of the passages mentioned in this lecture back in 2017 (in the "Cracks in the Text posts, part 1 and part 2).  Here is a transcript of the video!

Welcome to the twenty-fourth lecture in the series, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism.  Let’s begin with prayer.

Heavenly Father,

          Thank You for giving Your people the fruit of Your Spirit.  Influence us to long to be more loving, modeling your love.  Make us more joyful as we remember Your promises to us.  Make us peaceful, in light of the peace you have provided.  Make us patient, kind, and good, seeking to conform to the image of your Son.  Make us gentle, seeking to represent Your kingdom in every circumstance.  And give us self-control, that all our actions may be guided by our awareness of Your presence. Through Your Son Christ our Lord, Amen.

          Today we are investigating one of the most controversial areas in the field of New Testament textual criticism:  the creation and adoption of conjectural  emendations.  A conjectural emendation is a reading that is not directly supported by any witnesses.  Conjectural emendations are driven by the premise that on some rare occasions, the reading that accounts for all other readings is a reading that is not extant.

          Even in the earliest days of the printed text of the Greek New Testament, some conjectural emendations were proposed:   in James 4:2, Erasmus did not think that it was plausible that the readers of James’ letter would kill, so he introduced the idea that James originally wrote that his letters’ recipients were envious.  Erasmus’ conjecture influenced some future translations, including Martin Luther’s translation, and the 1557 Geneva Translation.

          By the late 1700s, so many conjectural emendations had been proposed that a printer named William Bowyer collected them in a book in 1772 that was over 600 pages long, titled Critical Conjectures and Observations on the New Testament.  Many of the conjectures were apologetically driven and resolved historical questions rather than textual ones, and many others implied a magical stupidity on the part of copyists. 

          But in 1881, when Westcott and Hort printed their Greek New Testament, they were willing to grant the possibility that 60 passages in the New Testament contain a primitive corruption, where only by conjecture could the original reading be recovered.  Other scholars have seriously argued for the adoption of non-extant readings in a few other places.

          We’re not going to look into each and every one of those 60 passages today, but we will look into some of them, especially the ones that have affected some English translations.         

Mark 15:25 – One of the earliest conjectural emendations is from Ammonius of Alexandria, from the 200s, whose proposal was passed along by Eusebius of Caesarea and others.  Ammonius suggested a conjectural emendation that could harmonize Mark’s statement (in Mark 15:25) that Jesus was crucified at the third hour, and John’s statement (in John 19:14) that Jesus was being sentenced by Pilate at the sixth hour.  Rather than imagine that different methods of hour-reckoning are involved, Ammonius proposed that the text of John 19:14 contains an ancient error, and that the Greek numeral Γ,  which stands for “3,” was misread as if it was the obsolete letter digamma, which stands for “6”).   Some copyists apparently thought that this idea must be correct, and wrote the Greek equivalent of “sixth” in Mark 15:25; a few others (including the copyists of Codex L and Codex Δ) wrote the equivalent of “third” in John 19:14.  

 John 1:13 – Another early church writer, Tertullian, proposed that the extant reading of John 1:13 is not the original reading.  In chapter 19 of his composition On the Flesh of Christ, he insisted that the reading that is found in our New Testaments is the result of heretical tampering, and that the verse initially referred specifically to Christ.  Not only Tertullian but also Irenaeus and the author of the little-known Epistula Apostolorum appear to cite John 1:13  with a singular subject rather than a plural one.          

John 7:52 – No reading that is supported exclusively by papyri has been adopted in place of readings that were already extant.  But a reading of Papyrus 66 comes very close to doing so.   William Bowyer’s 1772 book included a theory that had been expressed by Dr. Henry Owen about John 7:52:  Owen had written, “The Greek text, I apprehend, is not perfectly right:  and our English Version has carried it still farther from the true meaning.  Is it possible the Jews could say, “that out of Galilee hath arisen no prophet;” when several (no less perhaps than six) of their own prophets were natives of that country?  . . . I conclude, that what they really said, and what the reading ought to be, was … That the prophet is not to arise out of Galilee:  from whence they supposed Jesus to have sprung.”   

            The key component of Owen’s proposal was vindicated by the discovery of Papyrus 66, which has the Greek equivalent of “the” before the word “prophet” – just what Owen thought was the original reading. 

Some commentators have considered it implausible that John would report, in John 19:29, that the soldiers at the crucifixion would offer to Jesus a sponge filled with sour wine upon a stick of hyssop.  In 1572, Joachim Camerarius the Elder proposed that originally John had written about  a javelin, or spear, and that after this had been expressed by the words ὑσσῷ προπεριθέντες, scribes mangled the text so as to produce the reference to hyssop.  This conjecture, which was modified by Beza, was adopted by the scholars who made the New English Bible New Testament in 1961.

In Acts 7:46, textual critics have to choose between the reading of most manuscripts, which is the statement that David asked to be allowed to find a dwelling-place for the God of Jacob, and the statement that David asked to be allowed to find a dwelling-place for the house of Jacob (which is the reading in the Nestle-Aland compilation). 

            The second reading is more difficult, because it seems to say that David asked to build a house for a house.  Even when the second “house” is understood to refer to the nation descended from Jacob, the problem does not go away, since the temple was for God, not for the people, who were not looking for a new place to reside in the days of David.  In 1881, Hort proposed that “οἴκω can hardly be genuine,” but instead of accepting the Byzantine reading, he conjectured that neither reading is original, and that the original text was τω Κυριω (“the Lord”), which was contracted, and then inattentive copyists misread it as ΤΩ ΟΙΚΩ.         

In Acts 16:12, Bruce Metzger was overruled by the other editors of the United Bible Societies’ Committee, and an imaginary reading was adopted into the UBS compilation:  πρώτης was adopted, instead of πρώτης της μερίδος, so as to mean that Philippi was a “first city” of the district of Macedonia.  Metzger insisted that the extant text was capable of being translated as “a leading city of the district of Macedonia.”   

● Acts 20:28 – Bruce Metzger dedicated two full pages of his Textual Commentary to consider the variants in Acts 20:28.  Did the original text refer to “the church of God,” or to “the church of the Lord,” or to “the church of the Lord and God”?  The contest between “God” and “Lord” amounts to the difference of a single letter:  if we set  aside the Byzantine reading, once the sacred names are contracted, it’s a contest between ΘΥ, and ΚΥ.    If the contest is decided in favor of ΘΥ, then a second question arises:  did Luke report that Paul stated that God purchased the church with His own blood? 

           Many apologists have used this verse to demonstrate Paul’s advocacy of the divinity of Christ.  Hort, however, expressed echoed the suspicion of an earlier scholar, Georg Christian Knapp, that at the end of the verse, after the words “through His own blood”, there was originally the word υἱοῦ (“Son”).      

            The Contemporary English Version, advertised as “an accurate and faithful translation of the original manuscripts,” seems to adopt this conjecture.  It has the word “Son” in its text of Acts 20:28b:  “Be like shepherds to God’s church.  It is the flock that he bought with the blood of his own Son.” 

The Greek evidence is in agreement about how First Corinthians 6:5 ends.  But the Peshitta disagrees.  The reading in the Peshitta implies that its Greek base-text included the phrase καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ (“and a brother”). 

           The first part of Paul’s statement in this verse is something to the effect of, “Is there not even one person among you – just one! – who shall be able to judge between” – and that’s where the difficulty appears.  The Greek text just mentions one brother, whereas the idea of judgment between two parties seems to demand that more than one brother should be mentioned. 

            Although the Textus Receptus has the equivalent of between his brother” – which is clearly singular – the KJV’s translators concluded the verse with “between his brethren” (which is clearly plural).  The CSB, the NIV, and the NASB likewise render the text as if the verse ends with a plural word rather than a singular one.  All such treatments of the text make the problem all the obvious:  the first part of the sentence, in Greek, anticipates two brothers, while the second part of the sentence mentions only one.          

            In light of such strong internal evidence, Michael Holmes, the compiler of the SBLGNT, recommended the adoption of a conjectural emendation at this point, so that καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ (“and the brother”) appears at the very end of the verse. 

             A fairly recent development in textual criticism is the tendency to regard First Corinthians 14:34-35 as non-original even though the words are in every manuscript of First Corinthians.  In a few copies they appear after verse 40.  The usual form of this conjecture is that the words began as a marginal note and were gradually adopted into the text.  

          Gordon Fee advocated this view in his commentary on First Corinthians and it has grown in popularity since then, especially among interpreters who favor an egalitarian view on the question of gender roles in the church.  One of the interesting aspects of this  issue is the impact of the double-dots, or distigme, that appear in the margin of Codex Vaticanus to signify a variation between the text of that manuscript and the text in another document.

 ● A much older scholarly debate has orbited the phrase “Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia” in Galatians 4:25.  This sentence is included the Nestle-Aland compilation; however, it has been proposed that the entire phrase originated as a marginal note.  This conjecture goes back at least to the early 1700s, with Richard Bentley.  More recently, Stephen Carlson has argued in favor of the same idea. 

● In Hebrews 11:37, as the sufferings endured by spiritual heroes are listed, one of those things is not like the others:  they are all somewhat unusual experiences, except for “they were tempted.”  Some textual critics have suspected that the word ἐπειράσθησαν originated when a copyist committed dittography – writing twice what should be written once; in this case, the preceding word the means “they were sawn in two” – and that subsequent copyists changed it into something meaningful.  Others have thought that this relatively common term replaced one that was less common – perhaps another word that meant “they were pierced,” or “they were sold”. 

            Presently the Nestle-Aland compilation, deviating from the 25th edition, simply does not include ἐπειράσθησαν  in the text, following Papyrus 46.  But Papyrus 13  appears to support the inclusion of ἐπειράσθησαν and it has a very impressive array of allies.  I would advise readers to not get used to the current form of this verse in the critical text, for it seems to be merely a place-holder that might be blown away by the appearance of new evidence or slightly different analysis.    

● First Peter 3:19 – The most popular conjectural emendation of all time was favored by the textual expert J. Rendel Harris, who encountered a very brief form of it in William Bowyer’s book.  The extant text of First Peter 3:19 says, “in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.”  Verse 18 refers to Christ, and nobody else is introduced into the text, so verse 19 has been understood to mean that during the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection, He visited the realm of the dead, and visited the spirits of those who had been disobedient in the days of Noah, prior to the great flood – and delivered a message to them. 

            However, Harris, proposed that the original text was different.  He thought that Peter had in mind a scene that is related in the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. In this text, Enoch is depicted delivering a message of condemnation to the fallen spirits who corrupted human beings so thoroughly that the great flood was introduced as the means of amputating the moral infection they had induced.

            Harris proposed that the opening words of the original text of 3:19 were ἐν ᾧ καὶ Ἐνώχ (“in which also Enoch”), assigning the subsequent action not to Christ, but to Enoch.   There are two ways in which the name “Enoch” could have fallen out of the sentence.              

          1.  If the original text were simply Ἐνώχ (without ἐν ᾧ καὶ), then, in majuscule script, the chi was susceptible to being misread as an abbreviation for the word και (“and”) [a kai-compendium].  A copyist could easily decide to write the whole word instead of the abbreviation, and thus Enoch’s name would become ἐν ᾧ καὶ.

            2.  Or, if the original text were ἐν ᾧ καὶ Ἐνώχ, a copyist could read the chi as an abbreviation for και [again, a kai-compendium], and assume that the scribe who made his exemplar had inadvertently repeated three words. Attempting a correction, he would remove “Ἐνώχ.”

            Against the charge that the introduction of Enoch’s name “disturbs the otherwise smooth context,” the answer is that a reference to Enoch is not out of place, inasmuch as Enoch’s story sets the stage for the story of Noah and his family, whose deliverance through water Peter frames as a pattern of salvation.

            If this conjectural emendation were adopted, it would have at least a little doctrinal impact, by diminishing the Biblical basis for the phrase “He descended into hell” found in the Apostles’ Creed. 

Finally, in First Peter 3:10, we encounter an imaginary Greek reading that has been adopted into the text of the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament.  Rejecting the assortment of contending variant offered by the Greek manuscripts, the editors have preferred the reading that is implied by a reading for which the external support is only extant in Coptic and Syriac.  However, the judgment of the scholars who gave up on the extant Greek readings may have been premature.

 The text is sufficiently clear with the reading, “will be found,” while it is also puzzling enough to provoke attempts at simplification.

         Only two of these conjectural emendations are mentioned in the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament; the 27^th edition was the last one to list include conjectural emendations in its textual apparatus.   

          Some readers may be taken aback by the idea that some of the inspired words in the Word of God can only be reconstructed in the imaginations of scholars.  A realistic pushback against the idea of adopting any conjectural emendation is the question, “Does it really seem feasible that every scribe in every transmission-stream got it wrong?”  If scholars reject singular readings simply because they are singular, then non-existent readings should be even more disqualified, as a point of consistency.  It also seems very inconsistent to criticize advocates of poorly attested readings only to turn around and advocate readings with zero external support.

              It has been said by some very influential textual critics that New Testament textual criticism is both an art and a science.  But it should be all science, and not art, because it is an enterprise of reconstruction, not construction.  Its methods may validly be creative and inventive, and even intuitive, but not its product.  Conjectural emendation is the only aspect of textual criticism that potentially involves the researcher’s artistic or creative skill. 

            In my view, no conjectural emendation should ever be placed in a compilation of the text of the Greek New Testament.  At the same time, the task of proposing conjectural emendations as possible readings which account for their rivals serves a valuable purpose:  to demonstrate the heavy weight of the internal evidence in favor of such readings in the event that they are discovered in an actual Greek manuscript. 

            Thank you.           

 

 

 

Video Lecture: How To Use the Nestle-Aland Apparatus

            Now on YouTube:  the seventh lecture in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism!  In this 23-minute lecture, I discuss the textual apparatus in the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece and the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, and explain many of the symbols and features found therein. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQQr2DeeTl4

(At around the 5:43 mark, the slide that refers to letters should refer instead to numbers.)

The Text & Canon Institute - News and Views

Dr. Peter Gurry

            Special guests are here today:  Dr. John Meade and Dr. Peter Gurry, of Phoenix Seminary in Arizona.  They are here to share some information about the Text & Canon Institute, which was officially founded in January of 2019.  Thanks for joining us.

JM/PG: Our pleasure.

TTotG: A profile of the Text & Canon Institute is already online.  Have there been any changes since then?

PG: Since we launched, we have started two major initiatives.  The first is a scholarship and mentoring program for Phoenix Seminary ThM students who are interested in doing doctoral work in areas related to the text and canon of the Bible.  TCI Fellowship provides a scholarship of up to $10,000 toward the ThM degree and gives opportunity to work closely with me and Dr. Meade as we direct the Institute and carry out its mission.  Our first fellow is Clark Bates who is working with New Testament minuscules.

            We also announced a major conference that I’ll say more about below.  We’ll have another major announcement this fall that will be of particular interest to scholars across a range of sub-disciplines. So, stay tuned and sign up for our newsletter.

Dr. John Meade

TTotG:  I noticed that in in the announcement of the founding of the Institute, Phoenix Seminary’s Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Bingham Hunter, said, “The Institute is well positioned to defend the reliability of the biblical text and foster the church’s confidence in the books of sacred Scripture.”  Would one be correct in assuming that the Text & Canon Institute approaches textual criticism from a conservative perspective, taking for granted that the original text is divinely inspired and inerrant?

PG: Yes, although I wouldn’t just call it the conservative perspective, but rather the historic perspective of the church.  Also, we try not to take anything for granted around here!  From our vantage, the historic view of the Bible’s inspiration is not a hindrance to good, historical work but a strong motivation for it.  We believe that God can and certainly does work apart from human agency, but he often works through it.  Just as Scripture’s inspiration is God’s word given through human languages and words, so we should not be surprised to see both divine and human elements in the Bible’s subsequent transmission and canonization.

TTotG: There’s not a lot of online data about Phoenix Seminary.  Could you tell us more about it? – How many professors are there on campus; what is the average class-size; that sort of thing?

PG: I don’t know what the official average class size is, but in my experience it’s around 15.  We have a resident faculty of nine that we supplement with various visiting professors and adjuncts. Historically, the seminary began its life as an extension of Western Seminary in Portland and in the 1990s, became independent.  We have had several campuses over the years but recently moved into our permanent home here in Scottsdale.  

            Theologically, we are interdenominational but on the conservative side of the big tent of American evangelicalism. Our faculty is definitely “baptistic” but many of us are not Baptists.  Largely, we grew out of the Bible church movement that sprung up in the early part of the last century.  Phoenix itself is interesting in that it has never been dominated by one major Protestant denomination in the way places in the South or Northeast have been.  So, we are not a hotbed of Methodists, Baptists, or anything else.  In fact, the religion with the single biggest footprint here is probably Mormonism due, in large part, to our proximity to Utah.

TTotG: I’m unfamiliar with the geography involved:  technically, is Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, rather than Phoenix?  Or are Scottsdale and Phoenix the same place?

PG: It can be confusing.  The seminary is in Maricopa County which includes Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, etc.  The county as a whole is quite large and is the fastest growing in the U.S., with a population of over 4 million.  Technically, the seminary is in Scottsdale which is next door to the city of Phoenix.  Because many people outside the area think of all of Maricopa County as being Phoenix, we often talk about the seminary as being in Phoenix even though locals know we are located in Scottsdale.

TT: Does the Text & Canon Institute have any on-campus territory of its own?  If a patron were to donate, say, a Megillah-scroll, or a Book of Hours, or a lectionary-page to the Institute, would there be a place to store it or to put it on display?

PG: Sure. As part of Phoenix Seminary, we have full access to the seminary’s Biblical Research Center which houses the largest, privately-owned, theological library in Arizona.  If anyone wants to make such a donation, get in touch!

TTotG: Considering that Wayne Grudem teaches at Phoenix Seminary, would it be fair to say that Phoenix Seminary is the center of the ESV universe?

PG: No. I think the center, if there is such a universe, is in Wheaton, IL at the headquarters of Crossway Bibles, the publisher of the ESV.  We do tend to be fans of the ESV around here — but not uncritical ones.

TTotG: What’s happening at the Text & Canon Institute in February of 2020?  A conference of some sort?  Is the program all arranged?

PG: Sacred Words is the Text & Canon Institute’s inaugural church oriented conference, happening Feb 21–22, 2020 in Phoenix. (Phoenix is lovely in February!) It’s an opportunity to learn from internationally known speakers about how the Bible has been copied, collected, and confessed as God’s word.  Somewhat uniquely, we have speakers covering the text and canon of the whole Bible rather than just the NT as is often the case in these types of events.  To do that, we’ve brought together a great lineup of North American Evangelical scholars to help the church understand how she got her (Protestant) Bible.  The speakers are Dan Wallace (Dallas Theological Seminary), Peter Gentry (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Stephen Dempster (Crandall University), Jeff Cate (California Baptist University), Darian Lockett (BIOLA University), Anthony Ferguson (Gateway Seminary), and Tim Mitchell (University of Birmingham, UK).  In several cases, I know that speakers will be presenting the results of very recent research. So, it’s not to be missed if you can make it.

TTotG: Has any new research been completed on the text of the Harklean Group?  How far back do you think it goes?

PG: I think the text of the Harklean Group goes back to Thomas of Harkel and his translation finished in 616.  Obviously, it has to go back before that since that text came from the Greek manuscripts he had available near Alexandria.  But how much earlier, we can’t say.  As for new research, the most recent is my own in relation to the Catholic Letters, the edition of Mark  completed by Samer Yohanna, and the edition of Revelation by Martin Heide.  Personally, I think it’s about time we started a project on a critical edition of the entire Harklean New Testament.

TTotG: You are probably best-known to our readers on account of your work in New Testament textual criticism, but the Text & Canon Institute also focuses on Old Testament textual issues. Will the Institute address some of those issues – for instance, [turning to John Meade], if the apostles regarded the Septuagint’s form of the book of Jeremiah as canonical, why shouldn’t we?

JM: Yes, the TCI focuses on matters related to Old Testament textual criticism also.  We hope to dedicate a colloquium to the topic of Jeremiah’s text and the apostles’ and early church’s reception of that book.

TTotG: In terms of specific passages, what three New Testament textual contests that are currently unsettled would you most want to be firmly resolved? (Top three?)

PG: Luke 23:34; Mark 16:9-20; and the one I’m currently working on:  Ephesians 5.22.

TTotG: And in the Old Testament?

JM: The David and Goliath Narrative (I Samuel 16-18); Isaiah 53:8; the tabernacle instructions (Exodus 35-40).

TTotG: Turning to Old Testament textual issues: at what point would you say the text of the Torah ceased to be produced in transit, from redactor to redactor, and became sacrosanct, traveling strictly from scribe to scribe?  Was it sacrosanct as soon as the ink was dry, or did each generation that transmitted it feel free to adjust and expand it, or something in between?

JM: There’s little doubt that later redactors edited the books of Moses, since it’s pretty clear that Moses did not record the story of his own death (Deut. 34).  Probably, scribes still recognized the sacrosanct character of the Torah, even as they were finalizing its form.  When this happened is difficult to pinpoint, although I think the references in Chronicles (ca. 400 BC) to the Torah of Moses strongly suggest a long-standing collection similar to the one we possess.  The Greek translation of the Torah (ca. 280 BC) shows a stable work (though see the major differences in Exodus 35-40). The books of Jubilees and Reworked Pentateuch from Qumran could possibly be interpreted as “rival Pentateuchs,” but more likely is the case that these works were viewed as commentaries, rewritten bibles, or revelatory exegeses on the already established Torah of Moses.

TTotG: How do you feel about some of the large numbers in the Old Testament?  For example, when we see references to 600,000 Hebrew men in the days of Moses, should we reckon that this was literally the case?  Or should we assume that the historical quantity has been miscopied by scribes and was originally 60,000?  Or something else?  

JM: I’m not sure I understand the full import of your question.  Perhaps, there’s miscopying.  But a better solution is that Hebrew ’elep in these contexts probably means something like a “military company” or “clan” in the sense of a subgroup within tribes.  The word can indicate the number 1,000 especially when referring to a unit of weight (cf. I Samuel 17:5 with Goliath’s coat weighing some 5,000 shekels of bronze), but in some contexts like I Samuel 17:18, Jesse is simply asking David to take supplies to the captain of his brothers’ troop or military company, maybe 10 or more men — not 1,000 fighting men.  

            In several military scenes in the OT, this meaning is far better than 1,000s.  One finds it difficult to imagine Joshua leading a stealth ambush at night of 30,000 against an already much smaller Ai (Joshua 7:3) in Joshua 8.  Probably, Joshua’s 30,000 warrior men of valor should be understood as 30 troops, perhaps containing 10 to 12 men in each for a total of around 300 men.  So, Moses is probably leading out 600 troops of ten or so men for a total of 6,000 men with somewhere between 12,000-24,000 women, children, and others, totaling 24,000-48,000 slaves leaving Egypt.  This fits other descriptions that Israel was a small and insignificant people as Deut. 7 says.

TTotG: Dr. Gurry, I don’t know your text-critical approach to conjectural emendations, but, if you were making a compilation of the Greek New Testament, and you could put one or two or three conjectural emendations in the apparatus, what would they be?

PG: Oh goodness, I don’t know offhand.  I can say that I am open to conjecture in principle but in practice I haven’t come across any that finally convince me.  Although the NA28’s conjecture in II Peter 3:10 has its charms.

TTorG: Dr. Meade – Same question, but in regard to the Old Testament text.

JM: I don’t have a list of conjectures that I like.  Generally, I think the original wording is found in our manuscripts.

TTotG: Finally, while the “text” part of “Text & Canon Institute” is justified in light of emerging public awareness of the field of textual criticism, is “Canon” a real concern?  I’m not getting a sense that American evangelicals are clamoring for reevaluations of the Biblical canon.  What am I missing?

PG/JM: If by “reevaluation,” you mean are evangelicals open to removing books from the Protestant canon, I would say no.  But our experience is that many evangelicals have little or no knowledge about the history of the Bible they trust.  When they realize that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (and other ecclesial bodies) have different books in their Bibles, they naturally have questions.  When you add popular conspiratorial understandings of the process of canonization to that mix, then I would say that the “canon” of Text & Canon is easily justified from the perspective of the person in the pew.  Of course, at the academic level, all sorts of questions about canonization are in need of pursuit.  A further point goes back to an earlier question about different textual forms of Jeremiah and whether there was a canonical form(s) of the book.  So, yes, text and canon are more closely linked conceptually, historically, and theologically than most people realize.

TTotG: Thanks for sharing your insights and news.

News from Germany: A Sequel to CBGM

Dr. Nicholas Zegers

            The city of Müenster, Germany is abuzz with news of a groundbreaking new method of textual analysis that has been developed by scholars at the Institut für Neutestamentliche Witze.  The new method, colloquially called the Conjecture Based Genealogical Method (not to be confused with its predecessor, the similarly named Coherence Based Geneaological Method), promises to shape the future of the text of the New Testament.  I sat down with resident scholar Dr. Nicholas Zegers at Caputo’s coffee bar in Müenster to find out more:

Q:  Dr. Zegers, what led to this new method, and what is the basic idea behind it?

Dr. Zegers:  The CBGM2, as I like to call it, is built upon the principles of CBGM1, applied to non-extant readings – thus the name “Conjecture Based.”  As we at the Institute were analyzing a group of variant-units with unusually high numbers of rival variants, the data appeared to break down; it was somewhat like traffic gridlock, when no car takes the lead.  And then it occurred to us:  considering that our extant manuscripts are only a small slice of all manuscripts ever made; why not add a conjectural reading, or a series of conjectural readings, to the database, and see if the gridlock dissipates?

Q:  And did it?

Dr. Zegers:  To an extent, yes – particularly in cases where the extant witnesses share a high level of contamination.  Using CBGM2, we reconstructed a number of hypothetical Ur-readings and secondary readings at specific variant-units, and regrouped the extant readings according to the classical principle of granting preference to the reading which best accounts for the others.  When we do this at many variant-units, we can establish a pre-genealogical relationship between the texts of entire manuscripts, and the conjecturally reconstructed texts.  And from there, we can build a stemma that includes the reconstructions.

Q:  Splendid.  Did you find anything interesting?

Dr. Zegers:  Yes; in a substantial number of variant-units, some rival extant readings were previously in a virtual tie, using conventional analysis, and even using CBGM1, but when CBGM2 was applied, they resolved themselves into discrete patterns that, when combined, suggest lines of descent.  Not only did this organization of the data account for many nonsense-readings, but sometimes readings which are poorly supported externally are favored on relational grounds, and on occasion, a hypothetical reading – usually a proposed Ur-reading but sometimes what had been posited as merely a possible secondary reading – augmented the coherence of the stemma, and was vindicated by the analysis as the variant that best accounted for its rivals.

Q:  Can you share an example or two?

Dr. Zegers:  Certainly; I can recollect a few off the top of my head.  We anticipate that the application of CBGM2 will elicit the introduction of new conjectural or singular readings into the text of several books of the New Testament:  our research so far confirms “the Prophet” rather than “a prophet” in John 7:52.  In James 1:17, the reading found exclusively in Papyrus 23 is favored.  And at this juncture, things don’t look good for the final phrase of John 4:9.  Non-extant readings are confirmed to be original in Acts 8:7, Acts 8:36, Acts 23:7, Galatians 4:25, First Corinthians 6:5, and Second Timothy 1:13. 

Q:  It sounds like this new method might disturb some folks who like their English New Testaments to have Greek manuscripts as a foundation.

Dr. Zegers:  Well, the basic idea is really nothing new.  What has to be understood is that most manuscripts of New Testament materials once had mothers and siblings, so to speak, which are no longer extant.  From a certain point of view, we are not creating new evidence; we are recovering the voices of manuscripts which once existed but which have been silenced by the ravages of time and chance.  Furthermore, CBGM2 confirms exponentially more traditional readings than non-extant readings, sometimes surprisingly so.  The reference in Luke 24:42 to Jesus eating a piece of honeycomb, for example, is strongly supported by CBGM2.  We’re still not sure how that happened.

   

Q:  This all sounds fascinating, even revolutionary.  When can we expect to see this research in print?

Dr. Zegers:  The first forty-five fascicles are in preparation, and are expected to be released in alternating volumes in a co-operative publication effort by Brill and Gorgias Press.  A preliminary draft of an introductory essay, published initially in Caucasian Albanian, is already available; following a period of peer review, it will be accompanied by an exhaustive digital database in Kotlin.

Q:  Thank you for sharing this exciting news.  I can hardly wait to read more about it.

Zegers:  You’re quite welcome.  

 

What's New at Robert Waltz's ENTTC

For online introductions to the materials involved in New Testament Textual Criticism, few sites can compete with Robert Waltz’s Encyclopedia of NewTestament Textual Criticism.  It was updated relatively recently, which seems to have had the effect of pushing together the words that used to be at the ends and beginning of many adjacent lines of text.  That’s bad.  But on the positive side, several valuable new entries have been made since 2016.  Let’s take a look at some of the more important ones!

● In a new essay, Archetypes and Autographs, Waltz raises some questions about potential problems involved in the question for the earliest text of a composition.

● Waltz has offered a thoughtful critique of the “Assured Results” of scholarship, cautioning against casually accepting a scholarly consensus.  A handy supplement:  Waltz’s essay on Some Sample Variants and how critics have attempted their resolution.  (Even readers who do not agree with Waltz’s conclusions (I certainly disagree with several of them) may benefit from this display of how some “pat answers” have been created for some common text-critical questions.)

● A new page provides biographies of over 30 individuals who have made contributions of one kind or another to the field of New Testament textual criticism, from Kurt Aland to Francisco Ximénes. (Alas; the full scope of the alphabet could be reached had Nicholas Zegers been mentioned, but so far, no entry for Zegers).  The selection of detail might be nitpicked – A.E. Housman receives 27 paragraphs; Bruce Metzger got nine lines – but all the biographies are interesting.

● An informative essay on the history of Books and Bookmaking.

● A review of Canons of Textual Criticism, in which Waltz mentions that the rule That reading found in the majority of early text-types is best is his favorite rule regarding external evidence.

● An entry on Chemistry and Physics and their significance in the study of ancient manuscripts – especially in the identification of various pigments in illustrations, and in the detection of forgeries.

● An essay on methods of Collation.

● A brief consideration of Conjectural Emendations, including one in First Corinthians 6:5 that was adopted in Michael Holmes’ SBL-GNT.

● A collection of profiles of various Critical Editions (including the work of Reuben Swanson).

● A review of important Manuscript Libraries, facilitating the easy realization of which library is meant by which Latin or Latinized name.

● Neumes – musical notations – are described.

● Nomina Sacra and Other Contractions are listed and described.

● Old Testament Textual Criticism is summarized in an entry that covers a variety of sub-topics, ranging from the Septuagint to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

● The entry on palimpsests has been revised, and is likely to be expanded again as more and more researchers gain access to new findings yielded by the use of multi-spectral imaging.

● The entry on Versions of the New Testament has been revised.

● Writing-materials receive plenty of attention in an entry that discusses not only papyrus, parchment, and paper but also inks and pens.

Those are just some of the new and newly expanded materials that await the studious visitor to the Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism site.   

            Other works by Robert Waltz include a presentation of the text of Philippians with a concise apparatus and textual commentary, and a compilation of the text of Galatians with a running apparatus for select variant-units.   He has also prepared a webpage to address some technical concerns (and how to resolve them) related to the ENTTC site.

            A presentation of a 2013 version of the contents of the ENTTC site can be downloaded as a PDF.  Features of special note in this document include Appendix II, a Manuscript-Number Conversion Table (especially helpful for those who consult the work of Tischendorf, von Soden, etc.).  Its “Appendix IX” lists variant-units which have tended to be magnets of disagreement among compilers; it also features a rudimentary appendix for those variant-units.  

More Cracks in Nestle-Aland 28 (Acts-Revelation)

            In the previous post, I described some passages in the Gospels where the rival variants may receive different treatment in future editions of the critical text of the Greek New Testament, and/or in English translations based on it – including a few passages where the editors may adopt readings with no Greek manuscript-support, as the editors of the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece recently did in Second Peter 3:10.  Today, let’s look at a dozen passages in the rest of the New Testament which may be similarly vulnerable to the effects of thoroughgoing eclecticism.

● Acts 6:9 – The scholar Friedrich Blass (1843-1907), in the course of his detailed study of the Greek text of the Gospels and Acts, detected something abnormal about the mention of Libertines in Acts 6:9:  why did Luke resort to Λιβερτίνων, a Latin-based term, rather than simply write Ἀπελεύθεροι?  And why, followed by various geographically based terms, is this one not also geographically based? 

            Such questions elicited a search for answers.  Blass discovered that he was not the first reader to hum upon encountering the term Λιβερτίνων in this verse.  A long line of researchers, going all the way back to Beza, had sensed that something about this word was amiss. 

            Blass was informed by J. Rendel Harris that in the Armenian version, the reference was not to Libertines, but to Libyans.  How, though, could a reference to Libyans ever be misconstrued as Libertines?  And if the Armenian version’s base-text had referred to Libertines, how did the Armenian version end up with Libyans?  With remarkable determination, Blass dug a little deeper into this puzzle, and discovered, among the Latin poems of Catullus, the use of a rare term that satisfied his curiosity; transliterated into Greek, it is Λιβυστίνων – inhabitants of the area west of Cyrene.      

            This conjectural emendation resembles the extant text; it fits the context, it makes sense, and it introduces nothing problematic.  Future editors may reason that the rareness of the term Λιβυστίνων provoked early copyists to misread it, and also provoked the translators of the Armenian version to loosely approximate its meaning with a more familiar term.       

● Acts 7:46 – Working within the extant evidence, textual critics must choose between the statement that David asked to be allowed to find a dwelling-place for the God of Jacob (a reading supported by Codices A, C, E, 1739, the vast majority of manuscripts, and broad versional evidence), or a dwelling-place for the house of Jacob (which is the reading in the Nestle-Aland compilation, and which is supported by a small cluster of early manuscripts, including Papyrus 74, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Bezae). 

            The Alexandrian reading is certainly more difficult, because it seems to say that David asked to build a house for a house.  Even when the second “house” is understood to refer to the nation descended from Jacob, the problem does not go away, since the temple was for God, not for the people, who were not looking for a new residence in the days of David. 

            The reading οἴκω (“house”) has been considered too difficult by some textual critics, including Hort, who wrote in 1881, “οἴκω can hardly be genuine,” but rather than accept the Byzantine reading, he proposed that probably neither reading is original.  Instead, he conjectured that the original text was τω Κυριω (“the Lord”), which was contracted to ΤΩ ΚΩ, which was misread by inattentive copyists as ΤΩΟΙΚΩ.  If future editors of the Nestle-Aland compilation are unwilling to adopt Hort’s conjecture, they might at least acknowledge the force of his admission of the implausibility of the Alexandrian reading, and adopt the other reading, for which the diversity of the external support is very impressive.        

● Acts 12:25 – In the description of the action taken by Barnabas and Saul in this verse, there is a four-horse race, so to speak: 

            ἀπο Ἰερουσαλὴμ (“from Jerusalem”), supported by Codex D, Ψ, 614, several Old Latin copies, a significant minority of Byzantine manuscripts, the Vulgate, et al.

            εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ (“to Jerusalem”), supported by Codices א, B, and most Byzantine manuscripts.

            ἐξ Ἰερουσαλὴμ (“from Jerusalem”), supported by Papyrus 74, Codex A, et al.                       

            ἐξ Ἰερουσαλὴμ εἰς Ἀντιόχιαν (“from Jerusalem to Antioch”), supported by Codex E, 1739, the Peshitta, the Sahidic version, et al.

            The most difficult option is the variant with εἰς, because (1) when last seen in the narrative (in 11:30), Paul and Barnabas were already going to Jerusalem, and (2) in the very next scene (at the beginning of chapter 13), Paul and Barnabas are present at Antioch, not at Jerusalem.  Even though εἰς is in the Nestle-Aland compilation, some translators of modern versions have rejected this reading; for example, the NASB states, “And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem,” implying a base-text with either ἀπο or ἐξ.  The ESV reads identically (as of 10:00 p.m., August 4, 2017):  “And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem.”  The NIV also rejects εἰς, stating, “When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem.” 

            Nobody (other than avid advocates of the Peshitta) seems to think that the longest reading is original, because it looks like just the sort of textual adjustment that a copyist might make to alleviate a difficulty.  The contest, then, is between εἰς, ἐξ, and ἀπο.  Theoretically, if, in a scriptorium where a group of copyists worked from dictation, their supervisor read ἐξ, a copyist could mishear it as εἰς – but the theory works as well in the opposite direction. 

            Thoroughgoing eclecticism turns the race into a five-horse contest.  Hort suggested in 1881 that the original word-order has been garbled by copyists, and that the original text read τὴν εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ πληρώσαντες διακονίαν, so as to merely report that Barnabas and Saul returned, having completed their service in Jerusalem.  F. F. Bruce, whose confident comments about the reliability of New Testament manuscripts have been thoroughly recycled by many apologists, did not refuse to embrace a conjectural emendation in this passage; he held that in the original text there was no prepositional phrase at all, and that marginal glosses have impacted the text in Acts 12:25 in all extant manuscripts.

            Although textual critics often regard a higher degree of difficulty as a quality of the most-likely-original reading, it is possible that future editors may regard the currently printed reading here as simply too difficult, and either adopt ἐξ, or adopt ἀπο, or resort to conjectural emendation.     

● Acts 20:28 – Bruce Metzger dedicated a full two pages of his Textual Commentary to a consideration of this passage.  The initial question is, did the original text refer to “the church of God,” or to “the church of the Lord,” or to “the church of the Lord and God”?  Like John 1:18, the contest between “God” and “Lord” is a contest amounting to the difference of a single letter, once one accounts for the contraction of sacred names:  Θεοῦ (“of God”) becomes ΘΥ and Κυρίου (“of the Lord”) becomes ΚΥ.

            If that contest is decided in favor of Θεοῦ (on the grounds that this is supported by ﬡ, B, the Vulgate, the Peshitta, and a significant minority of Byzantine manuscripts, including the Textus Receptus), then a second question arises:  did Luke report that Paul stated that God purchased the church with His own blood?  Many an apologist has used this verse to demonstrate Paul’s advocacy of the divinity of Christ, inasmuch it was neither the Father, nor the Spirit, whose blood was shed.  Hort, however, expressed a suspicion (which, it seems, was first expressed in 1797 by Georg Christian Knapp) that at the end of the verse, following the words διὰ τοῦ αἴματος τοῦ ἰδίου (“through His own blood”), there was originally the word υἱοῦ (“Son”).      

            It is possible that future editors, may decide that the inclusion of υἱοῦ in this verse is required by internal evidence, and that it is feasible that the word υἱοῦ was accidentally lost very early via a common parableptic error (when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters ΙΟΥ at the end of ἰδίου to the same letters at the end of υἱοῦ.  Already, the Contemporary English Version, advertised as “an accurate and faithful translation of the original manuscripts,” has the word “Son” in its text of Acts 20:28b:  “Be like shepherds to God’s church.  It is the flock that he bought with the blood of his own Son.”  A footnote informs the CEV’s readers about the meaning of the extant text.

           

● First Corinthians 6:5 – The Greek evidence, from Papyrus 46 to the Textus Receptus, is in agreement about how this verse ends.  However, the Peshitta – a Syriac version traceable to the late 300’s (followed by a period of standardization), but possibly earlier – disagrees.  The reading in the Peshitta implies that its Greek base-text included the phrase καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ (“and a brother”). 

            The momentum for this reading is drawn from a grammatical oddity in the usual Greek text.  The first part of Paul’s statement in this verse is something to the effect of, “Is there not even one person among you – just one! – who shall be able to judge between” – and that’s where the difficulty appears, because the Greek text just mentions one brother, whereas the idea of judgment between two parties seems to demand that more than one brother should be mentioned. 

            The KJV’s translators, although the Textus Receptus reads ἀνα μέσον τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ (“between his brother” – which is clearly singular), concludes the verse with “between his brethren” (which is clearly plural).  The NET is similar (“between fellow Christians”); the difference is due to the NET’s enlightened gender-neutral treatment of the term ἀδελφοῦ, not to any new feature in the Greek base-text.  The CSB, the NIV, and even the NASB likewise render the text as if the verse ends with a plural word rather than a singular one.  All such treatments of the text make the problem all the obvious:  the first part of the sentence, in Greek, anticipates two brothers, while the second part of the sentence mentions only one.             

            In light of such strong internal evidence, Michael Holmes, the compiler of the SBLGNT, recommended the adoption of a conjectural emendation at this point, so that καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ (“and the brother”) appears at the very end of the verse.  It is possible that future compilers of the Nestle-Aland text will concur.  If that happens, it will have hardly any effect on English translations, most of which already translate the passage as if the wording proposed by Dr. Holmes is extant in the manuscripts.   

● Galatians 4:25 – For almost 300 years, a scholarly debate has orbited part of this verse.  The phrase “Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia” is presently in the Nestle-Aland compilation (as τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὅρος ἐστιν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ, though this is contested by four slightly different rival forms).  However, it has been proposed that the entire phrase originated as a marginal note, and does not belong in the text.  This conjecture goes back at least as far as Richard Bentley (a gifted British cleric, 1662-1742, who advanced the field of New Testament textual criticism more than anyone else in his generation).  Recently Stephen Carlson, who has conducted a stemmatics-based analysis of the text of Galatians, has argued in favor of the same idea.  (Robert Waltz, however, retained the phrase in his compilation of the text of Galatians.)  If future editors of NTG concur with Carlson, the phrase might be exiled to the footnotes.

A Syriac manuscript at Saint
Catherine's Monastery displays
an adjustment of the text of
Hebrews 2:9.
(Charley Ellis pointed out this
feature of the MS to me.)

● Hebrews 2:9 – In Bart Ehrman’s 2005 book Misquoting Jesus, the author noted that instead of reading χάριτι θεοῦ (“by the grace of God”), a smattering of witnesses supports χωρὶς θεοῦ (“without God”).  Origen, in the 200’s, was aware of both variants.  Opposing an array of witnesses that includes Papyrus 46, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Claromontanus, the Byzantine Text, and broad versional support, Ehrman proposed that χωρὶς θεοῦ was the original reading, and that an early copyist altered the text so that it said something less provocative – and this unknown copyist was so influential that his alteration has affected almost all extant Greek copies of Hebrews.

            As Ehrman noted in his book, the existence of the variant χωρὶς θεοῦ has been accounted for by some textual critics via the idea that it was written in the margin by someone who intended for the phrase to be a qualification of the sentiment of the preceding verse – the idea being that all things except God were subject to the authority of Christ – an exception mentioned by Paul in First Corinthians 15:27.  Resisting this proposal, Ehrman objected that if this had been an annotator’s intent, “Would he not have written “except for God” (EKTOS THEOU – the phrase that actually occurs in the I Corinthians passage) rather than “apart from God (CHŌRIS THEOU – a phrase not found in I Corinthians)?” 

            Ehrman’s objection loses much force when one observes that the phrase EKTOS THEOU does not, in fact, occur anywhere in First Corinthians.  Ehrman also overstates the evidence when he claims that “Origen tells us that this [χωρὶς θεοῦ] was the reading of the majority of manuscripts in his own day,” for Origen cites this reading and then says that some copies have the other reading, χάριτι θεοῦ; nowhere does Origen say that his collection of manuscripts at Caesarea was typical of the manuscripts of Hebrews that existed throughout the world.  Most readers of Ehrman’s book, however, will probably not double-check his confidently worded assertions.

            Centuries ago, the devout scholar John Bengel (1687-1752) cautiously favored the reading χωρὶς θεοῦ and argued that its meaning is not scandalous, but theologically profound.  Bengel proposed that it was intended to mean that the Son of God, and not God the Father, tasted death for everyone – an idea that is consistent with the text of Hebrews 1:3, where, in Papyrus 46 and the Byzantine Text, Jesus is said to have made atonement by Himself. 

            Another theory, wounded but not killed by the grammatical quirk that it involves, proposes that χωρὶς θεοῦ is original, and that the author intended to thus qualify the words ὑπὲρ παντὸς (“for all”), so as to convey the idea that Christ tasted death for everyone except God.  This is how Origen interpreted this variant, without dogmatically deciding in favor of either variant.

            Meanwhile, F. F. Bruce proposed an alternative solution:  he conjectured that χωρὶς θεοῦ originated as a note in the margin, and that subsequently a copyist replaced that note with one that read χάριτι θεοῦ, and that both readings have slid into the text – in other words, Bruce suspected that neither phrase is original! 

● Hebrews 11:11 –As the list of variants in the textual apparatus of the STEP-Bible shows, the textual racetrack in Hebrews 11:11 is crowded with rival variants.  This sort of contest is difficult for the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method – the newly developed mapping-program used by some of the Nestle-Aland editors – to handle.  Researcher J. Harold Greenlee (a scholar in the same league as Bruce Metzger), proposed that the original text of this verse did not contain σπεῖρα or ἡ σπεῖρα (that is, it did not specifically say that Sarah was barren).  Michael Holmes’ SBLGNT likewise does not have σπεῖρα or ἡ σπεῖρα in its text. 

            This constitutes preference for a Byzantine reading (supported by ﬡ, A, and minuscules 33 and 1175, et al).  The effect of this textual decision (and some nuanced syntax-related translational decisions) can be seen via a comparison of the text of the NIV 2011 (which adopts it) and the text of the 1973 NIV (which does not):

            NIV 1973:  “By faith Abraham, even though he was past age – and Sarah herself was barren – was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise.” 

            NIV 2011:  “And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.”

            Whether future editors will continue this trend remains to be seen, particularly because the loss of σπεῖρα can be attributed to parableptic error, when a copyist’s like of sight drifted from the last two letters of Σάρρα (“Sarah”) to the same two letters in σπεῖρα (“barren”).    

           

● Hebrews 11:37 – In the list of the sufferings of spiritual heroes, one of those things is not like the others:  they are all somewhat unusual experiences, except for ἐπειράσθησαν, “they were tempted.”  Some textual critics have suspected that this word originated when a copyist committed dittography – writing twice what should be written once; in this case, the preceding word ἐπρίσθησαν (“they were sawn in two”), and that subsequent copyists, not realizing the mistake in their exemplar, changed it into something meaningful.  Others have thought that this relatively common term replaced one that was less common – perhaps ἐπάθησαν (“they were pierced”) or ἐπράσθησαν (“they were sold”). 

            Presently the Nestle-Aland compilation, deviating from the 25th edition, simply does not include ἐπειράσθησαν in the text, adopting instead the reading of Papyrus 46, which is very ancient.  Papyrus 13, however, is also very ancient, and appears to support the inclusion of ἐπειράσθησαν, in which case it has a very impressive array of allies.  I would advise readers to not get used to the NTG’s current form of this verse, for it seems to be merely a place-holder that might be blown away by the appearance of even the slightest new evidence, and even by an intrinsically appealing conjecture.    

● First Peter 3:19 – What may be the most popular conjectural emendation of all time was favored by the erudite textual expert J. Rendel Harris (1852-1941), who encountered a form of it in William Bowyer’s 1782 book Critical Conjectures and Observations on the New Testament.  The extant text of First Peter 3:19 says, “in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.”  Verse 18 refers to Christ, and nobody else is introduced into the text, so verse 19 has been interpreted to mean that during the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection, He visited the realm of the dead – specifically visiting the spirits of those who had been disobedient in the days of Noah, prior to the great flood – and delivered a message (ἐκήρυξεν) to them. 

            Harris, however, proposed that the original text was different.  He thought that Peter had in mind a scene that is related in the pseudepigraphical amalgamation known as the Book of Enoch (the first section of which is quoted by Jude in verses 14-15 of his epistle), in which Enoch is depicted delivering a message of condemnation to the fallen spirits who corrupted human beings so thoroughly that the great flood was introduced as the means of amputating the moral infection they had induced.

            Specifically, what Harris proposed was that the opening words of the original text of 3:19 were ἐν ᾧ καὶ Ἐνώχ (“in which also Enoch”), thus assigning the subsequent action not to Christ, but to Enoch.  (A variation on this idea is that the original text read Ἐνώχ instead of ἐν ᾧ καὶ.) 

            (It should, perhaps, be noted that Irenaeus, in Against Heresies Book 4,16:2, took for granted the veracity of the tradition that Enoch had brought God’s message to fallen angels; these fallen angels being the “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis 6:2-4.)

            How could the name “Enoch” have fallen out of the sentence?  In two ways:

            1.  If the original text were simply Ἐνώχ (without ἐν ᾧ καὶ), then, in uncial letters, the χ was susceptible to being misread as a και-compendium (that is, a common abbreviation for the word και (“and”)).  A copyist could easily decide to write the whole word instead of the abbreviation, and thus Enoch’s name would become ἐν ᾧ καὶ.

            2.  If the original text were ἐν ᾧ καὶ Ἐνώχ, a copyist, reading the χ as a και-compendium, could assume that the scribe who made his exemplar had inadvertently repeated three words, and, attempting a correction, remove “Ἐνώχ.”

            Against the charge that the introduction of Enoch’s name “disturbs the otherwise smooth context” (as Metzger claimed in 1963) the answer may be given that a reference to Enoch is not out of place, inasmuch as Enoch’s story sets the stage for the story of Noah and his family, whose deliverance through water Peter frames as a sort of pattern of the salvation of the church.

               Future compilers willing to engage in conjectural emendation might consider the internal arguments in favor of the inclusion of Enoch’s name in First Peter 3:19 to be too attractive to resist.  If that turns out to be the case, then it would certainly have some doctrinal impact, significantly diminishing the Biblical basis for the phrase “He descended into hell” found in the “Apostles’ Creed.” 

● Jude verses 22-23 – Even though Tommy Wasserman has collated every known Greek manuscript of the book of Jude, plenty of questions remain about how that data should be interpreted.  Like Hebrews 11:11, verses 22-23 of the Epistle of Jude verse have multiple rival variants.  Here I shall spare readers the fine details of the case, and simply note that it is possible that future editors may discern here a threefold command, and that the first command from Jude is to refute (ἐλέγχετε) those who cause divisions.  Some copyists, with the earlier mention of mercy in verse 21 (ἔλεος) fresh in their minds, may have allowed their memory of it to complete the similarly started word in verse 22. 

            The reading with ἐλέγχετε is supported not only by Codices A and C* but also by members of manuscript-clusters represented by  minuscule 1739 and minuscule 1611; both of these clusters have special weight (as the echoes of distinct and ancient transmission-lines) in the Catholic (General) Epistles.  Even though the Nestle-Aland editors have already sifted through the text of Jude, they might take another look at this variation-unit. 

● Revelation 7:6 – More than one commentator on the book of Revelation has admitted to being puzzled by a feature of the list of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:  inasmuch as the tribe of Joseph is included, why is the tribe of Manasseh (Joseph’s son) also listed, but not Ephraim?  Another question:  why, in the extant Greek manuscripts of Revelation 7:6, is Manasseh’s name spelled in so many different ways?  

            A conjectural emendation answers both of those questions:  in the original text, the last portion of verse 6 did not refer to the tribe of Manasseh, but to the otherwise unmentioned tribe of Dan, and an early copyist misread ΔΑΝ as ΜΑΝ, and understood it to be an abbreviation of Manasseh’s name.  Thus ΜΑΝ originated, and different copyists with different orthography proceeded to spell out the name.  The Bohairic version supports this idea; in this verse the Bohairic text does not refer to Manasseh, but to Dan.  Perhaps future advocates of thoroughgoing eclecticism, on the strength of the Bohairic reading’s intrinsic appeal, will bring ΔΑΝ into the text.

In Conclusion . . . 

            Some readers, looking over these passages, and the passages from the Gospels described in the preceding post, may feel a measure of consternation, particularly because seven of them – in Matthew 1:16, Matthew 28:19, Mark 1:1, John 1:18, Acts 20:28, Hebrews 2:9, and First Peter 3:19 – have been used as a basis for establishing doctrine.  However, only in the case of First Peter 3:19, and the teaching that Christ visited imprisoned spirits, could it be argued that a doctrine stands or falls on the acceptance or rejection of a particular reading or conjecture (and even then, a case could be made that Paul teaches essentially the same doctrine in Ephesians 3:9-10, minus the specificity in First Peter).  

            (Apologists for Islam may sense a different sort of consternation, inasmuch as even with the allowance of conjectural emendation in the picture, the application of thoroughgoing eclecticism elicits nothing remotely close to the level of textual alteration that would bring the doctrinal teachings of the New Testament into harmony with the teachings of the Quran.  The charge, often made by Muslim apologists, that the New Testament agreed with the Quran until Christian copyists altered the text of the New Testament, simply lacks a historical foundation.)      

              It is sometimes said (because Bruce Metzger said it) that New Testament textual criticism is both an art and a science.  But it should be all science, and not art, because it is an enterprise of reconstruction, not construction.  Its methods may validly be creative and inventive – even intuitive – but not its product.  Conjectural emendation is the only aspect of textual criticism that involves the researcher’s artistic or creative skill. 

            No conjectural emendation should ever be placed in a compilation of the text of the Greek New Testament.  At the same time, the task of proposing possible readings which account for their rivals, or which otherwise resolve perceived oddities in the extant text, serves a valuable purpose:  to demonstrate the enormous weight of the intrinsic evidence in favor of such readings in the event that they are ever discovered in a Greek manuscript. 

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